Historically, communications infrastructure and transmission formats utilized by electric grid operators have relied upon technologies that have evolved as control systems have evolved. For example, analog circuits that carried low bit rate packets and information could be carried over plain old telephone service (POTS), microwave communications, and physical links of various types that are known in the art. Over time, both wireline and wireless infrastructure evolved to digital formats that have been the backbone for both privately owned, privately provisioned and public network infrastructures. These digital formats, which are primarily synchronous networks and time division multiplexed (TDM) networks, followed the analog modulation schemes by offering greater capacity over both copper and wireless infrastructure. Such formats also lead to great innovations in speed and reliability with the advent of the synchronous optical network (SONET), digital wireless standards (such as, for example, the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) and code division multiple access (CDMA)), frame relay protocols, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) protocols, and many proprietary methods for transporting information digitally. Such digital formats have been beneficially employed to facilitate electrical grid operations, including the overall function, registration, operation, command, control and participation of grid elements and their logical control infrastructure for grid stability and reliability.
In the last ten years, great strides have been made in the telecommunications sectors through use of the Internet Protocol (IP) suite of transport and security protocols and the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) architecture. Similarly, advances in digital switching have reduced the amount of electronics and physical or virtual connections and multiplexing required to enable use of more efficient asynchronous formats that incorporate various methods for increasing the speed and reliability of IP transport connections. Ethernet connections, which heretofore were generally accepted only for local area network (LAN) connectivity, are now the standard for most data traffic, particularly for IP packets that do not require priority or security, or are for non-critical infrastructure.
More recently, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) accepted filings of several telecommunications carriers, local exchange carriers (LECs), and local access and transport area (LATA) carriers (intra-LATA and inter-LATA carriers) who are authorized to transport voice or other “non-information” services traffic to convert the legacy POTS, analog, and synchronous digital (TDM) connections to an IP infrastructure for all connections within the carriers' service territories or FCC granted licensed areas if the carriers are also wireless service providers. The process of conversion has been started in many carriers' core fiber interconnections as the fiber cores have been converted from SONET networks to advanced high speed transport methods, such as Multiple Packet Label Switching (MPLS). Additionally, Signaling System No. 7 (SS7) is being replaced by Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) as the control protocol for setting up, maintaining, and tearing down voice calls, especially over IP networks. The move to newer technologies provides many efficiencies for the carriers and facilitates a more distributed infrastructure for both traditional voice services and data transport services.
Further, FCC action in 2011 dealing with the interconnection of Data over Cable Interface Specification (DOCSIS) for data transport in both synchronous and asynchronous formats of voice, video, and data within fiber or hybrid fiber coax delivery systems and voice service common carriers over pure IP formats (voice-over-IP or “VoIP”), combined with (a) the rollout of third and fourth generation wireless infrastructure (including Long Term Evolution (LTE)) and the soon to be released TIA/IEEE standards for firth generation wireless services, and (b) advances in antenna design and software that have delivered advances in IEEE 802.11-X (a,b,d,g,n and its successors), have increased bit rates that take advantage of IP's inherent routing, reliability, and efficiency.
The FCC has recognized the movements by consumers and businesses to “cut the cord” and use wireless phones as landline replacements, as well as to stop using analog and lower bit rate digital (e.g., TDM) technologies. As a result and unfortunately for traditional wireline common carriers and LECs, the FCC, which has previously classified IP traffic between carriers and Internet Service Providers as an “Information Service” not subject to Federal or State level Public Utility Commission (PUC) oversight, has decided that federal rules regarding VoIP traffic must be re-visited to consider whether the voice component of the VoIP traffic is an “Information Service” or whether it constitutes a service that is subject to new interconnection rules between the carriers, the ISPs, the cable industry, the service-only providers, and the wireless carriers.
There are many drivers for the FCC to take this action. For instance, under previous interconnection rules, carriers that interconnected their voice and or data traffic with each other did so through highly negotiated interconnection agreements. Under these contracts and in accordance with FCC requirements, each carrier from which traffic originated was compensated by the terminating carrier (wireless or wireline) for traffic terminated in the adjacent carrier's network. At the end of a pre-negotiated time frame, generally monthly, the totals for minutes of use, erlangs, or megabits (Mb) delivered were reconciled and inter-carrier compensation (ICC) was awarded to the net provider of “traffic” to the terminating carrier.
Furthermore, some of the charges that all carriers charge their customers on these legacy networks were taxes and fees to fund the build out of rural telecommunications infrastructure. The “Universal Service Fund” (USF) was set up for rural communities and their service providers to have access to federal grant money to fund rural deployments and upgrades with the goal of keeping rural America at the same level of innovation as urban areas. As the aforementioned transitions have taken place, particularly with the introduction of IP transport for voice, video, and data, the fees flowing in the USF fund and, therefore, the money available for grants to rural communities has been dropping drastically for many years, forcing the FCC to re-evaluate its definition of IP based voice services as subject to USF fees.
FIG. 1 provides one example of the typical interconnection of voice and data traffic between two carriers (Wireline Carrier A and Wireline Carrier B, for example) providing wireline telecommunication services to their respective service areas 101, 102. Each carrier includes a respective local access and transport area (LATA) switch 104, 107 (e.g., a Class 4 tandem switch), as well as respective connection end point (CEP), billing, and call accounting functions 105, 108.
When a call originates in the service area 101 of Wireline Carrier A, which may be a large telephone or commercial carrier, and terminates in the service area 102 of Wireline Carrier B, which may be a rural telephone cooperative or rural LEC, the LATA switch 104 for Wireline Carrier A establishes a circuit connection with the LATA switch 107 for Wireline Carrier B. The voice call then proceeds over the established circuit and the CEP/billing/call accounting function 105 for Wireline Carrier A bills for the call, including charging the required USF fee. Similarly, when a call originates in the service area 102 of Wireline Carrier B and terminates in the service area 101 of Wireline Carrier A, the LATA switch 107 for Wireline Carrier B establishes the circuit connection with the LATA switch 104 for Wireline Carrier A. The voice call then proceeds over the established circuit and the CEP/billing/call accounting function 108 for Wireline Carrier B bills for the call, including charging the required USF fee. The two carriers would also be responsible for paying each other ICC as required by the carriers' interconnection agreement. In situations such as those illustrated in FIG. 1, the periodic reconciliation between the large commercial carrier and the much smaller, rural carrier would typically result in the larger carrier (e.g., Wireline Carrier A in FIG. 1) paying the smaller carrier ICC because, due to the much larger quantity of customers in the service area 101 of the larger carrier, more calls would likely originate from the larger carrier's network and terminate in the smaller carrier's network than would originate from the smaller carrier's network and terminate in the larger carrier's network.
In 2012, the FCC issued an order requiring that ICC for VoIP was to no longer be constrained by the definition of every packet that would or could be transported by the Internet or IP infrastructure, whether wireline or wireless, as an “Information Service.” The FCC further ordered that all carriers must track VoIP separately from other data services for USF funding under a new so-called “bill and keep” methodology, wherein voice traffic, regardless of its origin and format, would be tracked from the originating network and be billed by the network provider regardless if it is delivered to an adjacent network. In other words, under the FCC's “bill and keep” model, each carrier is required to terminate communications from another carrier for free. The FCC's order also went further in providing that each carrier, regardless of its type, would provide a defined “Point of Interface” (POI) where carriers could pass IP traffic (IP voice or data) from one network boundary or carrier to the next.
An additional issue that has recently been resolved through litigation deals with the concept of “net neutrality” or “open Internet.” In 2010, the FCC advised carriers that operated IP networks, Internet service providers (ISPs), or any network providers that passed IP packets that offering “Priority Access,” which would take advantage of the IP protocol's natural OSI protocols to order packets in the most important order as determined by the carrier and the application, would not be permitted. The FCC's order was controversial as it allowed for pure applications companies to utilize carrier networks to transport bandwidth intensive services regardless of their impact to the overall speed, reliability, and capacity of the transport links. Companies that offer bandwidth intensive applications (e.g. music, video, or live streaming) would have in effect, under “net neutral” protocols, the same priority of transport as private and public entities providing critical infrastructure applications, such as emergency services, electrical grid operations, potable water supply operations, and natural gas supply operations.
In response to the FCC's net neutrality requirement, grid operators, utilities, and market participants constructed private networks for their operations to insure that their traffic, carried either through their own transport (wireless, fiber, copper etc.) or through transport leased from commercial carriers, had priority over being carried within the public or common carrier infrastructure. Where private infrastructure was used, additional cost was incurred by the private network operators for dark fiber, dedicated network capacity, private radio networks, and leased lines, for example.
In 2013, a federal appeals court struck down the FCC's net neutrality requirement after the FCC was sued by a combination of carriers. The court affirmed the carriers' ability to define the uses of their networks and charge, provision and allocate resources, including priority access, as the network carriers and providers saw fit, subject to the FCC's requirements for differentiating and accounting for VoIP as a service for purposes of paying USF fees and subject to the FCC's “bill and keep” model for carrier interconnection.
In view of the court's decision on net neutrality, network carriers have sought federal approval to decommission their legacy POTS, TDM, Frame Relay, ATM, SONET, and other networks in favor of using IP networks. The legacy networks have historically been used by electrical grid participants and users of other distributed private networks (e.g., public safety networks). As a result, grid participants and other affected private network users will have to re-design their networks as secure IP networks before 2020.
With the movement of telecommunications carriers to IP transport and the ability for the carriers to define new points of interface, a need has arisen for new methods and apparatus to enable distributed private networks, such as, for example, the electric power grid and other critical infrastructure networks, to communicate messages over public IP networks while maintaining the security and priority requirements of each particular distributed private network.